Mock up of the hex territory map

[acosmo]

Originally Posted by Figment

Seeing this image especially, I'm really not sold on the idea of empire sanctuaries per continent. It makes the world feel cramped and forced as it forces very specific approaches to conquering a continent: always the same starting point and typically ending in a stalemate threeway (with an approximate long and stretched frontline as above) with little hope of progressing further: as you progress in one direction, the other empire will start pushing your side and since you have to defend the entire frontline, this will make it pretty hard to hold on to territory that stretches your frontline further. Even if you manage to push one empire and its, say, 500 troops back to a sanc, you simply can't lock the third empire out of a fight for long. :/

no shit

Spawning options in combination with missions and continent sanctuaries are going to have a massive impact on the flow of battle and I personally fear the result will be endless stalemates.

there's got to be some way to *control* a continent.

[SuperMorto]

Originally Posted by acosmo

there's got to be some way to *control* a continent.

Controlling a cont makes for dead conts. Like many of them in PS1, always red, blue, purple.

Having all the capable hexes on a map means you control it. But it wont stop people hacking back, it just means when then do its going to take some time for them to get it all back, thus resulting in more war! The whole point of the game. A controlled cont does nothing for anybody, there is no benefit to having one. It just sits looking pretty on the map.

[DviddLeff]

Loads of great ideas here and lots of questions for the devs!

I hope that there is a win condition for a continent; capturing all the hexes should in some way kick the enemy out, at least temporarily.

[Crator]

It wouldn't be called a Zerg is the majority weren't a part of it right?

[SuperMorto]

I know what people are saying about controlling a cont, I know there has to be a way for you to say ok, we done this one now lets move on, well if empire/base needs resources then does it not bring it down to 0 if they have no hexes? Like when a base in PS1 has no power left? That means to start capturing territory back will take ages. I just dont like the conts being fully locked in PS1.

[acosmo]

Originally Posted by SuperMorto

I know what people are saying about controlling a cont, I know there has to be a way for you to say ok, we done this one now lets move on, well if empire/base needs resources then does it not bring it down to 0 if they have no hexes? Like when a base in PS1 has no power left? That means to start capturing territory back will take ages. I just dont like the conts being fully locked in PS1.

i do. there needs to be some in-game downtime. it can't be non stop constant heart racing gut pounding action or else people will get very tired let alone bored of the constant grind.

[Crator]

Originally Posted by SuperMorto

Controlling a cont makes for dead conts. Like many of them in PS1, always red, blue, purple.

Having all the capable hexes on a map means you control it. But it wont stop people hacking back, it just means when then do its going to take some time for them to get it all back, thus resulting in more war! The whole point of the game. A controlled cont does nothing for anybody, there is no benefit to having one. It just sits looking pretty on the map.

This isn't true, at least in PS1 it isn't. Controlling a cont gave you specific benefits to other conts that connected to them via the lattice network.

[SuperMorto]

Originally Posted by Crator

This isn't true, at least in PS1 it isn't. Controlling a cont gave you specific benefits to other conts that connected to them via the lattice network.

That is true, but it also made the continent dead to the rest of the game. That and pride where the only 2 good reasons "well including stopping back hacks" for having a cont lock. Im not saying these are not good reasons, but to have a continent completely locked out of the game seems silly, but I suppose this means it could make the world smaller depending on populations. So if was good in that fashion. I just didnt like how all the empires seemed to have certain conts locked all the time and all fighting depending on your empire was done one 1/2/3 conts.

I suppose we will have to wait and see how this pans out, its going to be strange I know that for sure. And will take some getting used to after playing Planetside for so long. I just hope it work better than PS1 whatever way it works.

[TheRagingGerbil]

But let us not forget the "Resources" monkey-wrench that higby is also throwing into the equation.

Lets say that Indar only has one Auraxian (sp?) processing plant. Said Auraxian is required to produce your empires heavy weapons. People are going to want their toys, so they will be motivated to fight for the plant.

But what if owning the plant isn't enough? What if the the Auraxian itself is found in the mines on the other side of the continent. Well shit, now you need to get that too.

[Ailos]

Agreed. In PS1, unless something went FUBAR before you logged on and your empire got pushed back to your home continents, fights would only take place primarily on either Ishundar, Searhus, Cyssor, or Oshur (and mostly on the first three after the bending, too). Fights would get pretty boring after a while, because attack plans for Zerg on the continents were predetermined by geography and bridges, while tactical options were restricted due to the lattice system. Black ops squads could drop gens to break tech plant or drop ship connections, but depending on the situation, that may not be that big of a deal. (The Zerg only really notices the difference when they're both gone at the same time, and that's rare.)

In PS2, there is a shitton more capturable real estate. Hopefully, it's not all identical, and there are distinct benefits from each facility under your control. Throw in the Auraxium issue, get rid of the lattice structure (using one of the extensively discussed methods to counter ghosting), and keep the pretty geography, and strategists will have a plethora of different ways to accomplish the same thing (capturing the continent), and the Zerg will still have their loved mindless, single-directional grind through canyons and bridges. Add in the rotating strongholds, and no daily fight will be the same even though the stalemates never stop.

[Figment]

Well, instead of the sanctuaries on every continent, or the system we had in PS1, I once came up with this lattice suggestion:

http://forums.station.sony.com/ps/po...id=88000016100

It came awfully close to implementation, as Beady really liked it and got a lot of support from players. Of course then Beady left SOE and we had no more coding resources.

It is based on a triangular system with three homecontinents, of which two homecontinents are sharing sanctuary warpgates with another empire. This was done to make zero basing extremely hard, or rather, make it easier to get back into a fight somewhere and especially hard for one empire to control ALL continents at once.

The basic structure of the lattice map looked like this:



As you can see, I made the easy to cap Oshur islands split up and gave them pivotal roles in the lattice as home continent and Nexus (together with Searhus) central continents.

All lattice links were used and permanently connected, including all the caves AND Old Oshur. The caves could thus now be active at all times and you can easily make the warpgate links of the four-link continents switch dynamically to create new lattice setups - including the home cont links.

In old world map language, the system looks like this:



In this system, I would predict one of the "double homecontinents" to be able to come under control of one empire, as it would be an almost guaranteed two-way (unlike the guaranteed three-ways I foresee in PlanetSide 2). If the third empire wants in, that's possible by going through the caves or fight across Auraxis to one of the "side" links. Even then it would be a pretty tough fight to win for a third empire, seeing as they'd have to start in the middle.

On another note, you can see that the three empires each are likely to control four continents and there are two "neutral conts" in the middle: one dual-homecont, their Oshur island home cont and the two continents linked to the Oshur isle home continent. And of course a bunch of caves which would largely be two-way fights and not TR exclusive as they are today.


I'm sure the PlanetSide 2 continental lattice and sanctuary setup may still be changed if Beta proves the fights never end (which could upset some players who want to be able to accomplish an actual continental conquest). In that case, I'm hoping a triangular setup somewhat similar to the one I made for PS1 could be used.

It would require a lot of continents, though you could initially start with four continents each with three warpgates and slowly expand from there, add a few more warpgates (perhaps more warpgate types with less basic facilities available). But yeah, you could expand the system with new continents like a fractal.

[Graywolves]

Cool stuff.

[Figment]

Btw, anyone notice the hex grid at the top and other places of the interface at www.planetside2.com?

[acosmo]

Originally Posted by Figment

Btw, anyone notice the hex grid at the top and other places of the interface at www.planetside2.com?

honeycombs yo. it's gonna be sweeeet

[ThirdCross]

It doesn't sound like there will be many continents at launch so it would be a waste to have any locked. Because of this and the lack of sanctuaries I'm predicting each empire will have a permanent foothold on each continent, meaning locking a continent will be impossible.

I wouldn't be surprised if locking becomes implemented when more continents are released. Then they could introduce sanctuaries/permanent footholds to three of the original continents.